1492 eBook

Gutierrez shook the dice in the box. “Oh,
Queen Luck, that I have served for so long! Why
do you not make me viceroy?”

Said Escobedo, “Viceroy of the continent of
water and
Admiral of seaweed and fishes!”

Diego de Arana took that up. “We are obliged
to find something! No sensible man can think
like some of those forward that this goes on forever
and we shall sail till the wood rots and sails grow
ragged and wind carries away their shreds or they
fall into dust!”

“Who knows anything of River-Ocean? We
may not find the western shore, if there be such a
thing, for a year! By that time storm will sink
us ten times over, or plague will take us—­”

“That’s the undeniable truth,” quoth
Roderigo Sanchez, and looked with a perturbed face
at the too-smooth sea.

Smooth blue sea continued, wind continued, pushing
like a great, warm hand, east to west. The Admiral
spent hours alone in his sleeping cabin. There
were men who said that he studied there a great book
of magic. He had often a book in his hand, it
is true, but Juan Lepe the physician knew what he
strove to keep from others, that the gout that at
times threatened crippling was upon him and was easier
to bear lying down.

Sunset, vesper prayer and Salve Regina.
As the strains died, there became evident a lingering
on the part of the seamen. The master spoke to
the Admiral. “They’ve found out about
the needle, sir! Perhaps you’d better hear
them and answer them.”

Almost every day he heard them and answered them.
To make his seamen, however they groaned and grumbled
and plotted, yet abide him and his purpose was a day-after-day
arising task! Now he said equably, in the tone
almost of a father, “What is it to-day, men?”

The throng worked and put forward a spokesman, who
looked from the Admiral to the clear north. “It
is the star, sir! The needle no longer points
to it! We thought you might explain to us unlearned—­What
we think is that distance is going to widen and widen!
What’s to keep needle from swinging right south?
Then will we never get home to Palos and our wives
and children—­never and never and never!”

Said the Admiral, “It will not change further,
or if it does a very little further!” In his
most decisive, most convincing voice he explained
why the needle no longer pointed precisely to the
star. The deviation marked and allowed for, it
was near enough for practical purposes, and the reasons
for the wandering—­

I do not know if the wisdom of our descendants will
confirm his explanation. It is so often to explain
the explanation! But one as well as another might
do here. What the Santa Maria wanted was
reassurance, general and large, stretching from the
Canaries to India and Cathay and back again.
He knew that, and after no great time spent with compass
needle and circularly traveling polar star, he began
to talk gold and estate, and the pearls and silk and
spices they would surely take for gifts to their family
and neighbors, Palos or Huelva or Fishertown!